[teekert]

"As others have said these sanctions will likely do more to harm the repressed citizens of the regime than the Lukashenko"

I feel that that is true for almost all sanctions everywhere sadly. The Russians love their children too. In fact we have to really think hard on who they benefit, short and long term. Making markets more independent of each other is only making a war more likely. If goods don't cross borders armies will.

What is a better alternative? I don't know, but perhaps targeted educational pieces, like scientific papers to educate populations? Yeah it sounds like propaganda, but perhaps one can add methods to verify claims or something? Show how exactly a policy is detrimental to the population in question? It's a hard problem, I'm not claiming otherwise.

[BurningFrog]

> In fact we have to really think hard on who they benefit

It will benefit air travellers whose planes will not get hijacked by the Belarus air force.

[pavel_lishin]

Forbidding non-Belarus based flights from flying over Belarus would accomplish that.

[_ZeD_]

also treating this "incident" as a war act

[ridethebike]

As a war act? What does it mean in terms of practical steps?

[briandear]

Bomb one of their airbases. Russia can annex Crimea with no real response, so why should the EU show restraint? (I am not suggesting a bombing campaign, just a targeted strike on the airbase from which the intercepting fighter jet departed.) What’s Russia going to do? They want that Nord Stream pipeline. They aren’t going to militarily respond over some two bit dictator, even one friendly to Russia. The Nord Stream energy revenue is probably going to be much higher than the entire Belorussian economy.

[ridethebike]

The closest this scenario can materialize in real life is being printed in one of Tom Clancy's books.

Nobody is going to bomb stuff over this.

And as much as I like labeling EU toothless [1] - banning Belarusian airlines is proportional and "hawkish" response.

[1] - https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=27263934&goto=item%3Fi...

[pavel_lishin]

> why should the EU show restraint?

... to avoid escalating a single incident into a war, which is one of the reasons it exists?